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Forbes
27-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Will Luxury Travel Be Affected By The Current Economic Climate?
Adam Deflorian is the CEO of AZDS Interactive Group, a leading full-service digital agency for the luxury hospitality industry. It's no secret that the market is, at present, on the volatile side. With the announcement of tariffs, followed by the stop-and-go 'will they, won't they' aftermath, many industries are taking stock and wondering how to proceed. For the travel and hospitality industry, many are wondering what summer 2025 will look like. Don't be a Chicken Little. The sky isn't falling just because things are uncertain. Historically, the travel industry tends to rebound quickly, and while there may be modest year-over-year declines in the short term, recovery is typically swift. Hospitality is a long-cycle industry, and often any setbacks are offset by a rapid boost. Based on steady booking rates across my agency's client portfolios, high-income households continue to prioritize travel and experiences, indicating to us that they still view them as valuable expenditures. What may change is the type of travel they intend to participate in. Anticipated spending on trips and experiences is up from 2024; however, many Americans are reversing course on international travel. My agency's clients, comprising ultra-luxury hotel and resort properties, continue to show healthy booking data and revenue growth. So, how can hoteliers optimize their digital marketing efforts to target travelers? Advice For U.S. Properties Americans are embracing the art of the road trip, with more opting to drive rather than fly. Time and time again, our clients express the increasing appeal of experience-focused travel, and an adventure on the open road begins that type of getaway from the jump. With many travelers signaling enthusiasm in exploring their own backyard, my recommendation is for hoteliers to target locally and domestically. This trend matches our clients' data showing shorter booking windows. A recent report from Bank of America also shows that more than 70% of Americans are planning to travel this summer, and of them, most will stay within the country. Consider homing in on messaging to entice potential guests at a state level, and including campaign variety that appeals to neighboring regions. Ramp up unique offerings available to guests that show off the authentic appeal of the area. Collaborate with local experts to individualize events. Lean into what makes your property extraordinary. While potential tariffs may increase the cost of goods like linens and cleaning supplies, which may ultimately affect operating costs, experience-focused travel is a fantastic way to entice guests to stay longer and increase their spend while on property. Advice For International Properties The top percentage of households continues to travel, regardless of the economic climate. Based on our large booking data, we're seeing Europe, specifically Italy, the United Kingdom and France, remain as top destinations, with Southeast Asian countries rising in popularity. Digital marketing efforts should continue to target international travelers, along with high-earning American households. Similarly to domestic travel marketing strategies, an emphasis on experience-driven travel will align with what's appealing to guests. Culturally immersive travel options are especially resonating. Campaigns tailored to specific nearby regions, perhaps promoting localized series like 'Friends of the Chef' food and beverage events, can boost engagement and bookings overall. The bottom line is that most people will prioritize travel, no matter what is going on in the world. The desire for human connection is a constant and something that hoteliers can tap into to attract guests, both domestically and internationally. Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
The Guardian
06-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Digested week: Trump merch and what's in a name? A lot if it's Sussex
Just back from New York and – this is what you get for flying out of Newark – I'm stunned by the volume of Trump memorabilia for sale at the terminal. Actual Maga hats and T-shirts; old-timey baseball shirts with 'Trump 47' on the front; a fridge magnet depicting Trump's Iwo Jima moment, fist in the air behind the words 'Fight! Fight! Fight!; and a Trump hoodie with the slogan 'Take America Back'. It's New Jersey but still, piles of Trump merch for sale so close to the city feels like finding a fur-coat store next to the vegan pantry. In New York itself, meanwhile, there is widespread and guilty determination by friends to turn away from the news because engagement is just so depressing. The question most asked of me is how are Americans regarded in general and when they travel overseas? On that front, at least, I can reassure. As ever, it seems most people are too wrapped up in their own parochial dramas to give much thought to what, or who, any passing American they encounter might represent. With one caveat: travelling on American passports, we clear immigration in Reykjavik en route to New York where the official demands paperwork I've never been asked for before and tells me brusquely: 'The way things are done in America isn't the way we do them in the rest of the world.' I'm so stung by this condescension I find myself huffing, Colonel Blimp-style, 'I'm a British citizen!' – which startles us both, but probably me more than her. That encounter in Iceland qualifies as a 'microstress', a small aggravation that, according to a recent survey of 2,000 people commissioned by psychologists, can over time take as serious a toll on one's nerves as the big ones: death, divorce, moving house. In the survey, the top three microstresses were listed as being stuck in traffic, when a bin bag breaks (really?) and losing one's keys. I get this, but consider the flipside: the equalising force of micro-joys: the first (and second and third) coffee of the morning; finding the remote after you've lost it; or catching site of the cat asleep on the sofa with its paws in the air – small pleasures and improvements that, unlike winning the lottery, say, trigger a governable amount of emotion. I often think that contentment truly rests on banking enough of these small joys in a way that comfortably outweighs the big stuff. It's reported in this paper that Prince Harry had to wait six months for his children's passports to be issued after he had a punt at sticking 'HRH' in the honorifics field and listed their surnames as Sussex, in direct defiance of the queen's 1960 ruling that descendants without royal titles could not inherit the surname associated with their parents' peerage. Sign up to First Thing Our US morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion It's brilliant of Harry, in a way, trying to slide the issue past the king via an innocent piece of paperwork submitted to a faceless government body. When the passports weren't issued, Harry and Meghan, frustrated, put in a second application for 24-hour service and promptly had their meeting cancelled due to a 'systems failure', a piece of peerless counter passive-aggression by the king, with the added bonus of plausible deniability. There is, after all, simply no defeating British bureaucracy when it's set to truculence. These are Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet's second set of surnames, their first having been Mountbatten-Windsor, while Harry and William both grew up with the name Wales. The main takeaway from this story, as a friend observes, is that 'no one in that sodding family ever knows what their surname is'. From the land of move slow and frustrate things to the rapidly disintegrating Elon Musk who, in an even shorter timescale than anticipated, has turned on his benefactor, President Trump. Last week, Musk criticised Trump's 'big, beautiful' tax bill for swelling the deficit with that heavy-lifting word 'disappointed', and hedged with the coy qualifier, 'my personal opinion'. Obviously that mildness couldn't hold. By Tuesday this week, Musk's assessment of the bill had advanced from disappointing to a 'disgusting abomination'. By Thursday, Trump had retaliated on social media with threats to cut federal contracts to Tesla, provoking Musk to boast, 'without me, Trump would've lost the election' and make a veiled accusation – not the first time he's thrown 'paedo' around when challenged – that Trump was mixed up with Jeffrey Epstein. But while this was the moment we'd all been waiting for, watching the world's two most powerful men, both of whom appear to be suffering from cognitive impairment of some kind, duke it out, was less cathartic than simply morbidly depressing. An end of the week treat, however, in the form of Dame Rosemary Squires, the founder of the Ambassador Theatre Group, saying the quiet part out loud: does anyone really want to sit through a play that lasts longer than three hours? Her observation was triggered by the opening of Stereophonic, lately transferred to London from New York, which goes on for three hours 10 minutes. A Little Life, the recent stage adaptation of the Hanya Yanagihara novel, ran to almost four hours, although as an experience preferable, surely, to reading the book. This week, I saw the brilliant My Neighbour Totoro, which clocks in at two hours 40 and is fantastic, although still shy of the dream phrase 'running time one hour 20 minutes'. Still, there are some weeks when all you're fit for is Samuel Beckett's reward to the very tired who attempt to go to the theatre midweek: his play Breath, which comes in at a small, beautiful 35 seconds.
